Review: The Alice Network

September 26, 2018

The Alice Network by Kate Quinn is one of those novels where you finish it and you’re immediately sad because the adventure is over, but you’re happy you got to go on such a journey.

The novel, without giving too much away, is about the world of WWI lady-spies and the secrets they have to get and pass back to their superiors to help the war effort. The other timeline takes us to a pregnant teenager looking for her cousin just after WWII. The two main characters could not be more different but their stories tie together in an unexpected way.

Eve is one of the most interesting, well-written and definitely one of the most badass characters I’ve encountered in a book in a long time. Charlie’s story was fun to read but Eve was a blessing on the page.

Quinn’s use of two different points of view is not unique to the historical fiction genre but the use of two timelines plus the two perspectives was a delight to read. The interweaving of the two storylines was fantastically done and not confusing at all.

And the villain. Ohhhhhh, the villain. He was deliciously evil but not in an expected, moustache-twirling way. His motives are money and status and his manipulative methods make you hate every line of poetry he spouts.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to go inhale every other word Kate Quinn has penned, and wait anxiously to see if there’s going to be a movie adaptation.

(An enormous shoutout to April for recommending this book to me because she knew I would love it.)